Voting rights organizers in Southern states are banking on anger over Republican redistricting to push Democrats beyond expectations come November.
Across the South, organizers are taking steps to get out the vote — organizing at block parties and arts events, as well as hosting rallies and voting drives. They’re also sending trained, nonpartisan poll monitors to districts with predominant populations of color.
Polling has found that effort could be working. Rep. Shomari Figures, whose Alabama seat was heavily redistricted, is now tied with his Republican opponent in polls from the House Majority PAC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“If you can just change the rules anytime you want and do what you want, people feel powerless in some regard. But that is not what is happening in Memphis,” said Matia Powell, the executive director of Civic Tennessee, an organization aiming to advance civic power. “People see this as an opportunity for them to have their voices heard even more and fight back and make sure that this doesn’t continue to happen.”
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Tennessee’s U.S. House map was redistricted in May to split Memphis, once the seat of a Black-majority congressional district, into three other districts. Following that decision, the state’s August primaries had its largest turnout in a decade in Shelby County, which includes Memphis.
For Civic Tennessee and other organizations in the state, that outcome is the product of real effort on the ground to inform voters about the effects of redistricting. Organizers canvassed door-to-door, made phone calls and held events to educate voters on their new districts.
“We’re just meeting people where they’re at and making sure that they have the correct information to make appropriate decisions and cast a ballot,” Powell added.
The midterm landscape has been shifted and shaped by Republican redistricting, which has shattered formerly majority-minority districts that once held large Black voter populations.
The push is taking place across the South, including in Alabama, Louisiana and North Carolina.
The April Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais effectively stripped Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which protected and sometimes required majority-minority districts. The loss of those protections threatens the seats of several Black incumbent lawmakers including Figures and Rep. Don Davis (D-North Carolina). Rep. Cleo Fields (D-Louisiana) decided not to run for reelection after the Callais decision eliminated his district.
“This is about Black political power,” Shayla Mitchell, an election-protection organizer in Alabama, told The Washington Sun. “Civil rights and voters’ rights policy was created for Black people to have access to ballots. The way these policies and redistricting are being written now and being done are outsourcing or getting rid of Black districts.”
In North Carolina, organizers say they’re gaining momentum. North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, which is now held by Davis and was redistricted to include more southern parts of the state, was one of the first majority-minority districts mandated by a 1982 amendment to the VRA that went into effect after the 1990 census.
“This 2026 election is different,” said Mikayla Massey, an organizer for the North Carolina Black Alliance. “Folks are seeing very clearly the dilution of the Black vote in North Carolina, and I think that that is motivating people in CD-1 and CD-3, and just on the ground in general, to be able to make sure that we come out, be too big to rig and still make our voices heard at the ballot box.”
College students in the state are holding “stroll to the poll” events for historically Black colleges and universities whose campuses lost early voting locations. Massey and a coalition of other organizations are also hosting education programs to inform voters about the changes to their districts and a hotline to support voters on Election Day.
Organizers say that momentum holds in Louisiana, where the Callais decision originated. Ashley Shelton, the president and CEO of the Power Coalition — a group of organizations that work to educate and empower voters — said that more Black voters turned out for the May election just days after the state Senate approved the revised map than they did in the 2023 gubernatorial race.
“It’s an unfortunate action that our Legislature took, but the people said, ‘We don’t want this. We do not like this,’” Shelton said. “I think they made a miscalculation about what the impact of them doing this actually will mean for them, both this election cycle and certainly into 2027 when all of them are back on the ballot.”
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